


Nocturne

by LogicLoup



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, aaaaaaaangst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-09-16
Updated: 2005-09-16
Packaged: 2018-05-14 19:05:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5754733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LogicLoup/pseuds/LogicLoup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fall 1999, a sleepless night for Mr and Mrs Potter. After the war is over and everything's been said and done, there's still nearly two decades of baggage to go through, and shoving it all in the metaphorical closet only works for so long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nocturne

**Author's Note:**

> Written before the publication of _Half-Blood Prince_ , Nocturne is fully canon-compliant, if necessarily light on late-series detail.

Ginny wasn't quite sure what had woken her up this time. Perhaps it was simply the routine of it all. She knew, even if she didn't realise it, that sooner or later there would come a noise from upstairs, or an uncareful gesture when he settled back in between the blankets to pretend he'd actually managed to get a full night's sleep. But as it was, in the here and now, she found herself alone with a Harry-shaped tangle left in the blankets beside her.

"Who needs sleep?" she grumbled as she stood and shrugged her way into a dressing gown. Barefoot and blinking, she padded up the rickety stairs to the garret, careful as always to avoid the squeaking fifth step. The door at the top of the stairs was closed, and Ginny paused, her hand hovering above the doorknob. She had never done this before, never intruded on whatever it was that Harry did up here night after night after night. Obviously he needed, or at least _thought_ he needed, to be alone, but... a full year gone since Voldemort's fall, eight months since their marriage, two hundred forty-three nights of waking up to sheets gone cold from his absence. Enough was enough. She twisted the knob and gave the door a good solid shove.

With a Myrtle-ish groan of protest, the door swung open to reveal Harry kneeling on the floor, a shallow stone bowl in front of him spilling forth silvery light. Seemingly oblivious to Ginny's presence, he reached out a tentative hand to dip his fingers in the bowl's contents.

"Come to bed, Harry," she said. Harry's head whipped round to face her, and the Pensieve's light dwindled to a faint glow. With her hands firmly on her hips, Ginny looked, for the fleeting ghost of an instant, exactly like her mother. Righteous indignation mixed with infinite forgiveness like a potion that burned and soothed in the same swallow.

"I'm not sleepy," he protested, automatically. It was a gravestone voice, hollow as a Dementor's hood, and there was a stretching, anxious moment before Ginny could remind herself that divination and prophecy were all bunk. He _had_ survived without the other, and so help her, he would _continue_ to survive without the other.

Ginny sat beside Harry and leaned her head against his shoulder. "Is this what you've been doing all these nights? Sorting out your thoughts?" She felt, rather than saw, the shake of his head, the sharp intake of breath. "What, then?"

"Forgetting," he answered. "Trying to, anyway." She straightened at this, and looked up at him. The pale light of the Pensieve painted his skin an ashy grey and deepened the hollows beneath his eyes. "It's over," he insisted. "It's over and done with and I just want it gone but it won't, it's all still here." He bowed his head, fists balled at his temples.

"Let me see." Her voice was calm and level, as if the request were not only perfectly reasonable but also painfully obvious. "Let me see what's troubling you."

"You... you don't..."

"Yes. I do." Their eyes locked. Harry blinked first, scooting aside to give Ginny room at the Pensieve. She reached out her hand, dangling her fingers in the silvery swirl of Harry's memories.

She knew how this was supposed to work. The Pensieve was supposed to sort, to organise the memories placed in it, but there was just too much here, mental bric-a-brac dumped in without any rhyme or reason....

_A man in professor's robes unravels his turban to reveal a parasitic Voldemort. Sirius is blown back through a veiled archway into darkness. A red-haired woman tumbles aside as Voldemort advances on the child behind her. The sky is black with Dementors, wheeling like vultures over Harry and Sirius. Neville's face contorts in rage, a mirror to the gaunt, tormented face of the Death Eater woman at the end of his wand. Ginny lies in corpselike pallor on the floor of the Chamber of Secrets. The Dark Mark hovers in sickly luminescence above the astronomy tower. Voldemort looms over a bound Harry, knife in hand._

Ginny pulled herself bodily from the Pensieve's display. So much terror, so much suffering. So many scars on the heart. "I see." She turned to face Harry and nodded solemnly. "But what about these?" She took his hand and plunged it along with hers into the Pensieve.

_Ron and Hermione stand beside Harry's bed in the hospital wing, bruised but elated. Peeves salutes Fred and George's triumphant departure from Hogwarts. The red-haired woman and a man with Harry's hair stand laughing with Sirius at their side. Harry eagerly unwraps a brand new broom while Pigwidgeon flutters around Ron's head. Harry and Ginny stand side-by-side amidst a flock of Hermione-conjured songbirds. Ron and the twins load Harry into the back of the old Ford Anglia. Harry grins as he passes Ron a perfectly ordinary glass of pumpkin juice after pocketing an equally ordinary potion vial of water. The stands explode in cheers as Krum's desperate dive for the snitch signals a World Cup win for Ireland._

They sat for a long moment, sorting through this new flood of images. "They're all there," Ginny said finally. "Can't have one without the other. It's been a hard past few years for all of us, you most of all. I know that. But it's not just you carrying all of this—" She pushes the Pensieve aside sharply, setting its contents awash. "—anymore. We're all here for you, Harry. _I'm_ here for you." After wiping her hands on the lap of her dressing gown, Ginny stood decisively.

"Come to bed, Harry," she said again.

"I'm not sleepy," he protested, weakly. It was a token effort, and they both knew it.

"Who needs sleep?" A grin quirked the corner of her lips as she reached for Harry's hand and tugged her bewildered husband back down the stairs to their room.


End file.
